Valve has acquired'many' other devs at Hopoo. This means that the studio's unannounced title is no more.

The series, and Risk of Rain 2, has enjoyed a lot of success. The first game, created by Duncan Drummond and Paul Morse as a sort of indie smash, was released in 2019. It also sold like hotcakes, with 500,000 players on early access.

In 2022, the Risk of Rain IP was transferred from Drummond and Morse’s development studio Hopoo Games to Gearbox. And, if its latest expansion is anything to go by... well, it hasn't been going so well.

Hopoo's journey appears to be coming to an end. Hopoo's twitter announced that the studio's founders as well as "many talented members" will be "working directly on game development" at Valve.

The thread continues, "We are incredibly grateful to Valve and excited to continue working with their awesome titles." This change in direction does come with a price: "this means that we will stop production on our unannounced title, 'Snail.'" Drummond commented on the change via a quote tweet: "I now work at Valve". 'nuff said.

The bittersweet goodbye concludes with the following: "We love to make games, and will continue to do so for many years to come. We're thrilled to be working with the talented Valve team. "But for now, Hopoo Games, sleep tight."

I have mixed feelings about this. I've loved every Hopoo Games game I've played, so knowing there won't be more originals, even though the majority of its developers now work at Valve, is a bit disappointing.

In 2018, the former Firewatch developers Campo Santo were brought into the Valve fold, which caused In the Valley of the Gods to languish in development purgatory. The game was announced seven years earlier. It has a placeholder release date of December 20, 2029, so we should be waiting for a while.

It seems like everyone wins when Valve brings on Hopoo, even though it's not clear where they'll be working. It's also disappointing to know that wasa project in development, which is now being cancelled. However, Snail wasn't announced so it's difficult to be sad about something you never knew.

I've seen memes that say Valve doesn't make games anymore, but I'm not certain if this is still true. In the last four years, we've seen Dota: The Underlords and Half Life: Alyx. Now, Deadlock. The studio's output has been revving up again and I am eager to see what Hopoo can do for it.